The Basic Tools of Photoshop CS2

So you’re new to Adobe Photoshop and you don’t know how to use it? Not a problem. This tutorial will teach you the Basics of it and what each option does. The most commonly used tools in Photoshop are located on the Toolbar on the side.

On the toolbar are following tools and what they are used for.

Rectangular Marquee: You use this to change to different types of marquees. By doing this, you will click and hold the little black arrow on the right bottom corner. This can be used for several things, but a lot of people use it to select certain areas of graphics and fill it with different colors, or patterns.Move: This is used to move around your text or image on your document.Lasso Marquee: You use this to make different shapes, and to cut out a picture.TheMagic Wand: This is to select a certain area of your document.Crop: Common Sense. You use this to crop and resize your document,Slice Select: You don’t use this tool a lot. This tool is used to cut your images in half. Most commonly use for designing website layouts,Red Eye Removal: You use this to remove red eye.Brush: Used to put brushes onto your images,Clone Stamp/Pattern Stamp: This is used to stamp your images with patterns or pictures,History Brush/Art History Brush: Shows your brush history, you don’t use this a lot.Eraser: You use this to erase things off your images.Paint bucket:you use this to fill your layers with different colorsBlur: Used to blur and add special effects to your images.Dodge/Burn: Dodge will make things lighter and Burn will make things darkerText Tool: You use this to put text on your document.Pen: Very similar to the pencil tool. This is not a commonly used tool.Eyedropper:Chooses a color in the graphicZoom: Zooms in and out of the graphic

Underneath the tools, there is the Color Palette which is where you choose your Background color and your Foreground Color. Underneath the Color Palette is the Layer Masking Tools, which is used to cut out images. The small three icons under the Layer Masking Tools are used to make your screen to different sizes such as Full Size. Lastly, the bottom icon is used to transfer your work into Image Ready.

Everything is pretty much easy and common sense. The Help option on Photoshop also helps a lot if you ever get stuck with a problem.